


Namesake

by TwistedK



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Death, Future AU, M/M, Suicide, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:51:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedK/pseuds/TwistedK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't feel worthy of a name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Namesake

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Something I wrote a while back.

By the standards of the Survey Corps history, Levi’s squad is ancient even when the youngest in his team is 15 and he is the oldest at 27. Soldiers in his line of work rarely see their twenties.

This is why in the first day he put together his team, he tells them not to learn each other’s names until after their fifth mission in the front lines. Putting a name to a face creates attachment. Attachment is an emotion. Emotions are liabilities in combat. Liabilities in combat mean death.

“Stay alive long enough to earn each other’s names,” he says before they head out to their first sweep.

But by then he already knows their names by heart. Jean. Marco. Mikasa. Armin. Eren.

\---

Every couple of weeks, the Survey Corps sends out squads to the front lines of the Martian colony of Trost to sweep for threats in expanding the colony boundaries a few meters north at a time. They are mostly just for finding weak parts of the ground that give way to the caverns below the surface. But lately, more and more of the local inhabitants show up. And they have long made it clear that humans are not welcome in this planet.

When they come back to the colony after the sweep, they are covered in blood, none of which were theirs. As the new squad, Levi ordered them to stay back and observe the others. They provided support by dressing the wounded or carrying the corpses back to their settlement. Or what was left of them.

Levi watches them huddle together by the vehicle docks, shaking. They are so scared. So young. Too little. His heart twists when Armin starts laughing out of nowhere, a little madness taking hold, and he introduces himself. By the second expedition, they have nicknames for each other. Horseface. Jesus. Princess. Angel. Shifter. They call Levi their Captain.

He doesn't feel worthy of a name.

\---

They share a common shower room. It’s a simple tiled room with three shower heads on each side and two toilets at the far end. There is a metal tub in the farthest corner, only used for someone who is gravely injured and cannot stand on their own to be cleaned. There is no exhaust vent, no sinks, no doors.

Sewage is still in development even when their settlement is close to a decade old. Martian landscape is not as easy to coerce into human living conditions so running water and waste disposal are limited commodities, especially in the military quarter of the settlement. As if their lives weren’t sacrifice enough, Levi is disgruntled that even their personal hygiene must be sacrificed, too.

By the tenth sweep of the front lines, they no longer have shame to hide behind as they shed their clothes, crusted with blood - some theirs, some not - and let the hot streams of water wash away the grime and dirt. The guilt. The fatigue. The aches in their muscles. The images in their heads.

Levi looks around and disgust crawls in his skin when he sees their young bodies with ropes of muscles rippling under the skin that don’t look like they belong. These aren’t the bodies of children who play in the dirt, learning to shed their innocence one strike, one glance, one kiss at a time. He is disgusted with the sweeps that rips the innocence off them, skinning them alive of it.

He is disgusted with himself who leads them to the skinning. He scrubs and scrubs, and the guilt doesn’t wash off.

**\---  
**

At the nineteenth expedition, Levi's young team witnesses death for the first time. It was not the graceful heroic death the people in command make it out to be be. It was loud, messy, and the look on that soldier’s face was not one of pride or sacrifice. It was pure fear. And regret. As if this honorable life was not worth it.

In the showers, Jean takes Marco’s face with both his hands, still crusted with blood and dirt, and kisses him. They are naked and there is no shame. There is nothing left to them that day as the truth strips away all emotions. All, except relief. Ugly relief that someone else died. Relief that it’s someone else and not them. Marco’s voice, meant only for Jean, echoes in the shower room.

“We’re okay. We’re okay.”

Armin, Mikasa, and Eren stand under the shower, turned cold from other squads using up all the hot water, and let the dried blood slowly wash off. Mikasa reaches a hand out and rests it on the back of Armin’s head who lowers it and sobs quietly. Mikasa starts to cry as well. Eren turns to glance at Levi and their eyes meet. Determination burns in Eren’s eyes like a strong ember in the remnants of a fire that refuses to die.

Levi wonders what makes them so strong, what makes them capable of standing naked in the shower, unbuckling, to take another’s lips in theirs when he, at their age, spent days locked in his quarters, rocking himself back and forth, unable to stop his body from shaking. He wonders what keeps them standing. He thinks it must be the names. Maybe the names make them stronger. He chants their names in his head until he falls asleep and dreams of them.

**\---  
**

In the next sweep, Marco doesn’t come back. They drag Jean in, Levi watches the children cry, Marco’s name falling out of their throats in broken breaths. Jean is screaming his name.

Jean doesn’t shower.

They find him in his room a week later in a pool of drying blood, gashes from his wrists to the crooks of his elbows. There is no note. He didn’t need one. Marco’s name is etched in his heart.

“Captain,” Eren says, not turning to look. He stands like a statue beneath the running water. It is just the two of them and somehow the shame of everything weighs heavier on Levi’s shoulders.

“It wasn’t your fault."

Levi showers by himself and scrubs and scrubs until he breaks skin.

**\---  
**

At the 25th mission, Armin has to be carried in, one arm flung across Eren’s shoulder, another around Mikasa's and Levi carries his feet. He has no blood on him. But he isn't blinking.

“They’re just like us,” Armin says. “They’re just like us and we killed them. I killed them.”

Intelligence reports confirm that whatever they were eradicating at the front lines has the same intelligence as humans. To them, humans are extraterrestrial invaders and they are protecting their home from expanding colonies that are digging into their grounds and changing their atmosphere.

Levi scrubs until he bleeds in the showers late into the night. The noise wakes Eren up and when he pokes his head in the shower, he finds the Captain sitting the floor, hands and shoulders bleeding under a steady stream of water that has long turned cold.

He kneels in front Levi, his pants wet, and cups the captain’s face with both his hands. When Levi looks up, he realizes Eren is not a child anymore. Somewhere between the first mission and the latest, he was completely skinned of his innocence. There knelt a man.

A man who plants his lips on the captain’s, letting him whisper the younger’s name.

“We’re okay. We’re okay.” Eren says and Levi whispers his name again.

 **\---  
  
** When Armin is carried back in a bag slung over Eren's shoulder, Mikasa stops speaking altogether. She last blames herself for letting Armin save her life. It's an unfair exchange. Eren brushes her hair while she sits in a metal tub of cold water. She turns to Levi who sits at the foot of the tub. 

They both agree in the silence that he is the Angel of Death. She nods and he lowers his head. It's the only name that fits. 

"Take me," she says again, voice hoarse from disuse and the onset of death, not even a week later. She looks up at him with surrender as the blood drains out of the hole in her gut. 

\---

When Levi makes love to Eren, he pinches his lower lip between his teeth hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to stop their names from spilling out of him. Instead, he lets Eren say his name in desperate prayers, thinking it will give him strength to keep fighting in the dry battlefields of a place that will never be home.

Because even a thousand whispers of his name, or any name, cannot give him enough strength to carry Eren's body.


End file.
